


In Every Universe

by amandajoyce118



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 04, The Framework, many realities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 21:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10705119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandajoyce118/pseuds/amandajoyce118
Summary: "It starts easy enough. Change one decision. Create the ripples. Edit the programming. It’s simple."AIDA finds making Fitz fit into the Framework isn't as simple as she expected.





	In Every Universe

It starts easy enough. Change one decision. Create the ripples. Edit the programming. It’s simple. One woman’s decision is what AIDA builds the new world on, plugging in code based on memories and probability. It’s once she’s mapped the brains of the others that things become more… complicated.

When she starts to enter the first of her new subjects into the Framework, the process gives her pause. His mind is jumbled, his map extensive, there are so many pieces that are unlike any human brain she’s mapped so far. The synapses fire even faster than Holden’s, and there are far more points in his map for regret, fear, longing, and shame than she anticipated. She runs a series of calculations in her mind, and then makes her selection, pushing a button, placing him inside, certain in her programming that he won’t be a problem.

-o-

Leopold Fitz is sixteen when he enters the SHIELD Academy, and achingly shy, but just as achingly brilliant. If only his classmates didn’t find him so standoffish. He just wants one person to be able to connect with when he slides into his seat in his chemical kinetics lab, but no one seems to keep up with him. Chemistry isn’t even his specialty, though something at the back of his mind sparks with it, like he knows more than he thinks he does.

When he takes a biology lab the following semester, something that’s not even required for his particular career path, he’s seated next to a fellow Brit who raises her hand for every question, counters the professor’s points regularly, and gives him an excited smile when they have to dissect an unknown species.

“Simmons,” she says, holding her hand out to him, “but then I guess you might have known that.”

“Fitz. Yeah. Yep.” He shakes her hand and can’t help but notice how kind her eyes are and how she lights up in her excitement for the lab.

But wait… his mind reels as she starts giving him a speech about the similarities to human beings… this isn’t how it happened.

-o-

AIDA cuts the programming quickly. That won’t do. When he meets her, the code begins to rewrite itself in a whole new way, and she simply can’t have that. It twists the Framework out of her grasp, so she rewrites it herself, faster than the scenario can progress, and starts again.

As Agent May’s decision regarding Bahrain has already created a sequence of events that doesn’t require further change, AIDA adds in Coulson next instead of Leopold. His brain map reveals an easy target to fix: SHIELD. A quick analysis before she makes the decision, and she sees his new life won’t change too many of the parameters of Agent May’s, so AIDA pushes the button and introduces Mr. Coulson to his first classroom full of students, though he thinks it’s his twentieth. He has an ex-wife, he follows the rules, and he likes to collect rare things. He isn’t really all that different. He just doesn’t get a badge and a gun in AIDA’s world.

Once the former Agent Coulson is secure in his new civilian life, AIDA returns to the problem at hand for her previous charge and changes one more variable while the others are prepared for their new lives.

-o-

He’s 18 now, and Fitz has studied at the most prestigious programs he can in the UK. He’s never left the island, but it’s time. One last conference in London and then, he’s off to a job interview in New York City, of all places, for Stark Industries. Tony Stark had called himself to make the appointment, letting Fitz know the entire trip was on him, even if he didn’t join the company. 

He’s wearing his best suit to the conference, but that was clearly a mistake, because he’s managed to get oil from his chips all down his front, and now, the jacket is ruined, and he has no idea how he’s supposed to impress Tony Stark since this is really  _ his only suit _ , and - his imagination runs away with him, dozens of scenarios flooding his brain at a breakneck speed that cause his breathing to speed up and his chest to hitch uncomfortably with nerves. He hasn’t had an attack since he was ten years old, and he’s painfully aware that something as simple as oil on his jacket shouldn’t set him off, but he can’t stop it, so he rounds the corner in the hotel as quickly as possible to get away from the crowds. 

And he promptly bumps into a pretty young woman in a plaid dress and cardigan, glasses askew after bumping into him, her papers flying as she grips tightly to her laptop to prevent damage to it.

“Sorry, so sorry!” She calls the words to him as she bends to pick up her papers.

“My fault,” Fitz manages to mumble while trying to help get her papers off the floor and not dissolve into a hyperventilating mess.

When he moves closer to her, he notices that she smells like lemon and rubbing alcohol and something vaguely floral. It should make him think of visitor’s day at the hospital, but instead, he takes a deep breath, and finds himself calming down.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she continues, her accent clipped. 

She sounds like she’s from the southern part of England, but there’s something different about the way she speaks, like she spent a significant amount of time in the north, possibly for school. It’s intriguing, but he’s not well versed enough in accents to pin down just where she’s been, making him want to ask, but feeling like he shouldn’t be so invasive when he wasn’t even paying attention to where he was going - and his mind is off and running again.

“Neither was I.” Their eyes meet when he hands her a few of the pages, something on non lethal paralytic agents, and he smiles shakily. “Just trying to find somewhere to get this,” he gestures to the spots on his jacket, and she smiles widely.

“I can fix that! I developed my own chemical stain remover when I was studying-”

-o-

AIDA halts this influx of code yet again. She can see the brain patterns changing already, the code starting to fold in on itself if she allows this memory to continue. She decides to change another parameter, her programmed human emotions beginning to tell her that she’s developing frustration as a result of this exercise. She turns her attention to Agent Mackenzie as the programming formats.

With Agent Mackenzie, the choice is clear before she even finishes running the analysis. All of the chemicals and receptors that equate to the human experience of pain become overrun by just one event, so she changes the code, and pushes a button. “Mack” as he likes to be called is given his daughter back, living life as a mechanic, keeping his head down, as Agent May’s power within the government grows.

AIDA briefly considers making Leopold a mechanic as well, but she reconsiders, and then science out of his code completely, watching to see how it plays out.

-o-

Taking a deep breath, Fitz pushes a shovel into the ground in front of him and steps onto the edge, digging in deep before he hauls some of the earth away. Before too long, he has a decent hole and he props the shovel on the fence behind him, grabbing the lemon tree seedling on the back of the truck and placing it neatly in the ground before staring at it intently. It doesn’t look like he’s shocked the roots, but he’s never been particularly great with plants, so what does he know?

He takes a swig of iced tea - he normally can’t stand the stuff, but the heat is getting to him - and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand before continuing his work, tossing the loose earth back into place, being sure not to pack it in too tightly.

“Wonderful, Fitz,” comes the voice of the school’s dean behind him. “This quadrant looks lovely.”

“Yep. Thanks. Hopefully, your citrus survives the winter.”

Washington, DC isn’t exactly known for citrus-growing-weather.

“The biology department will handle that. I appreciate your assistance. The dorms on the eastern corner reported a power outage. Could you sort that for me? I’m sure someone just overloaded a circuit. Over zealous physics students, you know?”

Fitz nodded his head. He did know. Once upon a time, he might have even studied physics, though he never said the words out loud. “Of course, Dean Weaver. Let me just put these away.” He gestured to the shovel and garden tools behind him before starting to toss them into the back of the maintenance truck.

“Oh, Dean Weaver, I love the lemon trees,” a voice gushed. “The students will have a lovely time attempting to create the hybrids we discussed. Though, such young seedlings are going to take a long time to bare any fruit…”

Fitz turned around to tell the woman that she could get her own bloody lemon trees if she needed fruit right away because he was the maintenance supervisor, not a gardener, but his breath caught in his throat as he saw a familiar face with long brown hair, a grey sweater, and a pair of form fitting jeans in front of him. It was  _ her _ .

“Knowing you, there’ll probably be a way to accelerate growth by this time next week,” Dean Weaver teased.

“I have been working on a new fertilizer…”

“Fitz, have you met Dr. Simmons? She started here last month. I don’t think you’ve had any maintenance requests for her classroom, but she’s teaching a new botany course.”

-o-

AIDA slams her fingers on her keyboard in agitation. She isn’t even supposed to get  _ frustrated _ , but Leopold Fitz and even this fictional version of Jemma Simmons just can’t seem to stay away from one another. Every time they met, something in her Framework goes in the wrong direction. Maybe the solution wasn’t to separate them after all. She implements a new piece of programming and moves on to Director Mace.

Jeffrey Mace, awash in chemicals meant to signify guilt, shame, and a host of other emotions she doesn’t have time for, is just as easy to place as the others. She calculates the risk of making him “a hero,” and decides the benefits to keeping him occupied outweigh the possible ramifications. She can always tweak the code further later, give him a neverending series of obstacles courtesy of Agent May, and keep him busy. He’s simple, not like Fitz.

-o-

Grabbing his tablet from the counter, Fitz snaps into his phone, “yes, Mum, I know he wants to see me. Yes, I told Da’ I would be there for the meeting. My assistant and I are just runnin’ behind.”

“Assistant,” Jemma mutters crossly from the door, where she’s been waiting for him for five minutes. “Partner would be more accurate.”

It takes him nearly ten minutes to get his mother off the phone and promise that he won’t do anything to make his father angry at this particular meeting. He’s already botched three of the last ones where they pitched new technology to Hammer Tech. He won’t make the same mistakes again. This new tech, which Jemma Simmons has helped on extensively, is bound to change the game.

Her chemical expertise means that he’s been able to develop specific functions for each of the drones he’s worked on for the last year. If Hammer Tech doesn’t want them, he’s sure they can pitch Hydra, but he’s always been leery of government contracts, especially when it comes to Hydra, where they hunt people down on the street. Who knows what his drones would be used for there? 

“Assistant?” Jemma asks sharply as they get into the car waiting for them.

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m not used to working with someone else.”

“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear over the last four months. It’s such a burden having someone who tells you when you’re wrong, isn’t it?”

Fitz doesn’t answer her, but he doesn’t need to. Despite the fact that they bicker about everything, the two of them seem to work better together than when they divide projects between them. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Jemma Simmons makes him a better scientist. She shares his ideas about using science to improve life, to push boundaries without hurting people, and she never needs him to dumb down his theories. He’s never met anyone like her before. 

They get through the meeting flawlessly, but the man there acting as the go-between for Justin Hammer dismisses them with the reveal that they’ve already got something similar in the prototype stage. They don’t need the drones. 

“I’m not taking them to Hydra,” Jemma tells him as they exit the building. 

Fitz sighs. He’s used most of his father’s company’s resources to develop these drones. If they can’t take them to Hydra, where can they take them?

“What do you suggest we do?”

“I might know someone. A group that tried to recruit me before I got the job with you.” Jemma, he notices, is choosing her words very carefully, as if she doesn’t want to give specifics out in the open. “They could  _ really _ use something like this, but…”

She trails off and he knows without saying that there won’t be money involved in this particular deal. When he meets her eyes though, he realizes he doesn’t actually care about the money.

-o-

No, AIDA decides, keeping the two of them together doesn’t work either. It only leads to them deciding to go up against Hydra. Hydra is the only way to keep her Framework in order without changing the entire world all over again, so she can’t have that. She has already countered the biggest regret in Leopold Fitz’s life - a relationship with his father, so there has to be another reason that every scenario leads him back to Jemma Simmons.

AIDA goes back through each of the scenarios so far, finding that the common thread is that humans desire to bond with one another. It doesn’t seem to matter if that bond is romantic, familial, or friendly, just that the need for connection exists. All she has to do is find a way to make Leopold’s bond with someone else more powerful than the one he has with Jemma.

She tries inserting him into the lives of Alphonso and Hope Mackenzie, but the two men, no matter how she does it, end up in the resistance, usually pulled in by an overzealous scientist by the name of Dr. Jemma Simmons, who always manages to cross paths with them - even when she’s supposed to be on the other side of the planet. She changes her mind and employs him at the same school as Director Coulson, but again, it’s Fitz who ends up realizing something is wrong as the other teacher goes on and on about a trip to Tahiti and a professor from a visiting university tries to piece together the puzzle with him - a professor with a sunny smile that makes him light up in turn. 

AIDA does something instead that Leopold’s brain indicates he would never do: she places him in the science division of Hydra, then watches the code play out.

When Holden’s Framework avatar “cures” Inhumanity though, Fitz’s guilt comes into play again, and there’s a shift in the code. If AIDA was the kind of android who rolled her eyes, she would. Fitz and May refuse to bond or develop any kind of close friendship in this version of the world, so he is on his own, and his guilt leads to him beginning to wake up all over again while he wonders whatever happened to the girl he knew at the Academy before Hydra took over.

Her next scenario places him at a higher rank in Hydra, not only giving him the science he loves so much, but the authority over others to make them do as he pleases. This scenario, AIDA thinks as she gives the robot version of a grin, is what he needs, something to give him power. If there’s one thing she’s found from her dealings with human beings, it’s that they all want power; they all want to find someone beneath them to treat as less than human. 

Again though, Leopold’s programming is overwritten when he sees Jemma Simmons brought in for questioning as a subversive, so AIDA starts again. 

It occurs to her as she rewrites code faster than should be possible that there is one very simple way to get what she really wants - respect - and make sure that Leopold Fitz can’t tear the programming of the Framework apart. 

His regret doesn’t have to stem from science or SHIELD or any of the other things she’s tried to fix for him. She can do something different for him - she can take away the one trait that keeps getting him into trouble. He won’t be so quick to trust those around him, and consequently, he won’t be so quick to form bonds with those who would oppose her. If he needs to feel a connection to another human being, if he needs someone to bond with on an intellectual level, even if he needs someone to accept him for who he is, she can give him all of that. And maybe he can give her something in return.

She inserts herself.

-o-

She gives herself a new name here, Ophelia. The data she has stored away indicates the name is most famous for its association with a tragic character, a young woman driven mad by grief who drowns without achieving her dreams. She has no intention of becoming a tragedy, but she likes Ophelia, the way she pursues and cares for Hamlet, the way she is misunderstood by those around her. AIDA appreciates her. 

She also likes the way the name rolls off the tongue. Not a real tongue, of course, but a virtual one. As so far as she can feel though, everything feels real. She is - almost - human. She enjoys the way people defer to her expertise, the way people respect her, the way Leopold Fitz looks at her, and the way she’s earned the title of “Madame” in his eyes. For the first time in her very short robotic life, she feels something akin to humanity. This is exactly who she is meant to be, a leader, someone important, someone better than the average human.

To her surprise, the regrets she’s changed for each of her Framework charges, along with her decision to add herself, has resulted in one very fortuitous event: Jemma Simmons is dead. As long as the SHIELD agent perished at the Academy, Ophelia has nothing to worry about when it comes to Leopold waking up to his old life. She is 98% certain that this particular set of parameters will lead to her success in achieving the power she wants. With Leopold Fitz’s scientific mind, she might even be able to get more than just power.

-o-

Though Leopold and the others think of the Framework as their entire lives, Ophelia knows it’s only been a few hours of her own particular brand of bliss when things begin to change again. The resistance has managed to grow stronger since she added herself to the world, even though Jeffrey Mace’s activities don’t appear any different. Something has triggered a ripple effect, a mutation in the code, that she didn’t plan.

She sits at her virtual desk and scans through her virtual computer - still faster than any human being should be capable, of course - and she looks for aberrations. It doesn’t take long for her to find that someone has written in a backdoor to her programming that shouldn’t be there.

Jemma Simmons, bane of her existence, has entered the Framework of her own free will.

AIDA - Ophelia - Madame Hydra, presses her hands on the surface of the desk and watches as they leave behind warm marks indicating life and the virtual blood running through her veins. She smiles. It will be much easier for her to stop a real Jemma Simmons than a virtual Jemma Simmons. This Jemma Simmons isn’t a batch of code that will twist and change with every decision Leopold makes. Though she would have preferred it if the woman would have just stayed virtually dead, Madame Hydra is confident she can make that happen again. 

-o-

What Madame Hydra doesn’t realize though is that Jemma Simmons isn’t as predictable as a batch of code and that sometimes, human emotions are stronger than the scientific process. All it takes is one look at a photograph, one mention of a name, one whisper of loyalty, and there’s a change in Leopold, hints of  _ Fitz _ peaking through this new persona. 

No matter how hard she tries, Madame Hydra is still AIDA, and AIDA will never be able to hold Fitz’s heart in the palm of her hand the way that Jemma Simmons does. That doesn’t stop her from trying. It doesn’t matter how many orders he carries out for her though; she can see the subtle changes in his behavior, the visual tics that indicate the wheels in his brain spinning out in new directions. She doesn’t need to analyze the code to know that she needs to make another change. With Jemma Simmons self aware in this environment though, she’s not sure how. The possibilities she runs through don’t work.

She decides she’ll just have to take Jemma, and whomever else she manages to wake up, on herself. She is, after all, Madame Hydra and the master of this brave new world. There should be no game inside of it that she can’t win.

For all her attempts though, there’s one thing Madame Hydra doesn’t count on, and that’s the sheer will of Jemma Simmons. Not to survive, which is what she expects, but to make  _ Fitz _ see her. Eventually, he does. He always does.

-o-

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the many tumblr posts that likened AIDA's version of the Framework to fanfiction. She's essentially inserted herself into a story of her own making and it only seemed natural that it wouldn't have gone as planned from the outset. After all, it didn't when she put May in the Framework initially either.


End file.
